John Ivison: Strange way for CSIS head to come in from the cold

The United States may have a rogue general, but it looks as if Canada has a rogue spymaster.

What to make of a case that is sure to result in calls for Richard Fadden’s head? We have the country’s top spy telling Canadians there is a real danger from agents of influence controlling provincial Cabinet ministers and B.C. municipal politicians — a problem about which he says the public is oblivious. Yet it seems it is not just the public that is in the dark. The Prime Minister’s Office said it has “no knowledge of these matters,” pointing out that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service “directs its own operations.”

Mr. Fadden’s sudden urge to unburden himself has come at a particularly inopportune time for the government, given his accusations about Chinese interference in Canadian politics. The story broke the day Hu Jintao, China’s President, arrived on a state visit to Ottawa. If the CSIS director wanted to come in from the cold, there must be less dramatic ways of ending his career.

The comments themselves are extremely odd, coming as they do from a man extremely experienced in security issues (Mr. Fadden was security and intelligence co-ordinator in the Privy Council Office at the time of the 9/11 attacks). For instance, he admitted there is no evidence of foreign interference at the federal level. But as Wesley Wark, a national security expert at University of Toronto, pointed out, why would any foreign spy service waste valuable resources cultivating municipal and provincial politicians but not recruit at the federal level? “That strikes me as bizarre,” Mr. Wark said.

But let’s take Mr. Fadden’s concerns at face value — after all, the National Post’s Stewart Bell has been tracking foreign interference for years, including allegations that the Chinese have fronted candidates in Canadian elections.

The most likely explanation is that Mr. Fadden sees himself on a mission to shake Canadians from their complacency over threats to their national security and has just learned the hard way why previous CSIS directors have stayed in the shadows.

In his first public comments last October, Mr. Fadden said Canada has a “serious blind spot” when it comes to terrorism.

“Many of our opinion leaders have come to see the fight against terrorism not as defending democracy and our values, but as attacking them. Almost any attempt to fight terrorism by the government is portrayed as an overreaction or an assault on liberty,” he said.

Fine sentiments with which it is easy to agree. But they are probably best left to a Public Safety Minister or the Prime Minister.

By speaking to the CBC the way he did, Mr. Fadden may have signed his own resignation letter and damaged the reputation of his service to boot.